LJ Interviews LDP's Greg Hankins

With the next Atlanta Linux Showcase (October 23-24) looming on the horizon, I decided it was time to get in touch with Greg Hankins, coordinator of the show and maintainer of the Linux Documentation Project.

With the next Atlanta Linux Showcase
(October 23-24) looming on the horizon, I decided it was time to
get in touch with Greg Hankins, coordinator of the show and
maintainer of the Linux Documentation Project. We “talked” by
e-mail about him and the show on June 1.

Margie: Let's start off with
some personal information. Tell us about where you live, go to
school, etc.

Greg: I live in Atlanta, GA,
where I have been since 1988. Before that, I spent most of my life
in Germany where I went to a German school through the 10th grade.
When we returned to the U.S., I began the 11th grade in high school
and decided that the only thing I wanted to do was to go to Georgia
Tech (a technical university located in Atlanta) to study computer
science. Ten years later, I'm still at Georgia Tech—I received my
bachelor's degree in 1996 and I'm now half-way through the master's
program.

I've been into computers since I was about 12 years old, when
I started playing on our Apple ][+. I got started with UNIX around
1990, when I instantly recognized it as the Right Thing. In fact, I
even bought an old AT&T UNIX PC so I could have a home UNIX
box. I started using Linux in the spring of 1993, and I still have
the set of floppy disks I used for installation (SLS 1.01
distribution, I think).

In real life, I'm a Network Engineer at MindSpring
Enterprises, an ISP with nation-wide coverage. My group is
responsible for the daily care and feeding of our WANs and LANs,
upgrading and expanding our network and evaluating new networking
technology. I am fortunate to also have a wonderful girlfriend, who
somehow manages to keep me from spending all my time in front of a
keyboard.

Margie: What do you for
fun—do you have time for fun?

Greg: With school, work,
Linux projects and trying to have a life, I do keep quite busy.
Linux is supposed to be fun, so I guess all my Linux projects count
as fun.

One of my hobbies is enjoying beer. I am an avid beer
enthusiast, and I maintain a constantly growing collection of
self-quaffed beer bottles and paraphernalia—at present, over 450
unique bottles. I attempted home brewing a few times and have even
tossed around the idea of becoming a certified beer judge.

I also enjoy British humor such as Monty Python, Young Ones
and the like, science fiction such as Dr. Who and Star Trek,
computer history and old computers (that would explain the PDP-11
in my bedroom) and bad puns. I'm also fascinated by anything
related to computers and high-tech toys—in that aspect I'm pretty
much a standard geek.

Margie: The Atlanta Linux
Enthusiasts seems to be a very successful user group. Tell us a bit
about how it got started.

Greg: Well, it all started
in 1994 with the “gtlinux” mailing list, a list we set up for
students at Georgia Tech to discuss Linux. Some of the people from
the list decided to form an Atlanta Linux users group to include
students, professionals and enthusiasts in the metro Atlanta area.
A posting to comp.os.linux.announce attracted ten people who wanted
to help, and on December 15, 1994 the group was founded. We named
it the Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts (ALE). Over 100 people showed up
at our first meeting in January, 1995.

We intentionally have no formal charter, membership or
organization. This keeps things simple and seems to work well. All
people have to do is show up at the meetings—that's it. We decided
on a meeting structure similar to the Atlanta UNIX Users Group
(AUUG) meetings, which have been going strong since
mid-1980.

Margie: What sort of
programs does the group put on to keep people interested and coming
to meetings?

Greg: We simply put on
exhilarating monthly meetings and Linux conferences! Each month we
have a speaker for our meeting. We try to vary our topics somewhat,
in order to appeal to all levels of users. If we can, we alternate
monthly between “new user” and “advanced user” topics. There is
also a free-form session at the end of the meeting where anyone can
ask a question of the group. This gives people a place to go for
help, as well as information. Most of our talks are given by ALE
members; we have very few talks about commercial products given by
vendors. We typically have around 50 people at our meetings—many
people are regulars, but I do see new faces each time.

From time to time we've also had free pizza and Coke at a
meeting or put on fundraisers (for example, I sold Dr. Linux and
Red Hat CDs a few times). Door prize drawings are frequent, as many
vendors send us CDs and books to give away. We will probably be
doing an install fest in the next few months.

We also maintain a mailing list for our group. People use the
list to ask questions about their Linux problems and to discuss
Linux and related topics. There are over 200 people on the list,
many from outside Atlanta and even some from outside the
U.S.

Margie: Does ALE appeal to
one group of people, such as students, more than another?

Greg: I'd say that we have a
very good mix of professionals and enthusiasts in the group as well
as quite a few students. We happen to meet on the Georgia Tech
campus, but that hasn't affected the attendance mix in a big way.
We certainly encourage everyone to attend and don't discriminate in
any way.

There is a local Georgia Tech group, but they focus more on
specific problems the students might have, such as using the dorm
networks. A group at Emory University is forming for the same
purpose.

Margie: Last year ALE put on
a very successful Linux exposition, the Atlanta Linux Showcase, and
is planning to do it again this year. Can you tell us some of the
reasons last year's show was such a success?

Greg: Yes, we did put on a
very successful Linux show last year. It was an all-volunteer-run
conference and trade show organized entirely by our users group.
The thing that made it possible was an extremely dedicated core
group of people who gave hundreds of hours of their time to support
something that we passionately believe in—Linux. It was also to
our advantage that we had an extremely diverse group of people who
volunteered. For example, different people had prior experience
with trade shows, accounting, printing, graphic design and other
useful things.

We gave everything from time to loans from personal funds in
order to make this event work. Linux International also helped us;
in fact, it was Jon “maddog” Hall who first approached us with
the idea of putting on a “small” show—little did we know what it
would grow into. We basically had no capital and no legal
organization that could sign contracts. Linux International
provided critical support in those areas—we provided the hard
work.

I think we had a combination of good conference programs and
vendor exhibits, as well as a great location for the show. Atlanta
is a great city for conventions. We have the facilities, a big
airport, good transportation and many things to do and sights to
see, which provided people with entertainment in the evenings. I
think people had fun. It was great to see so many people in one
place all talking about Linux.

Since then, we have taken the profits of last year's show and
invested them in the next show. We formed a small corporation to
give us legal standing and protection and have also been dealing
with taxes and getting approval as a credit card merchant. Many
rules and regulations exist which complicate things, and an
enormous amount of determination and effort is required to make
things fall into place. We're learning how to run a not-for-profit
business, all in our spare time!

Margie: Any disasters to
report?

Greg: I'm pleased to report
we really didn't have any disasters, other than a noticeable lack
of sleep on our part. The show was organized in about four months,
which is a very short amount of time to organize any size
conference or trade show. Many large conferences are planned years
in advance, and the time frame in which we organized the show
presented a few problems of its own. For example, booking exhibit
space is almost impossible with only a few months' notice. We
completely missed advertising deadlines and were too late in many
cases to even get on upcoming event calendars. We've been planning
our next upcoming show for over a year.

Another problem was dealing with money. Since we were an
unofficial organization, we could not accept credit cards and thus
could only accept cash or checks from conference attendees. We also
had to put our checking account in the name of one of our
organizers, instead of the name of the show. This year, we have
fixed both of these problems.

Margie: What are the plans
for this year's show? Speakers? Highlights? How many people do you
expect to come this year?

Greg: Our plans for this
year include two days of technical and business talks about Linux,
free and Open Source software, and vendor exhibits. Dr. Michael
Cowpland, President and CEO of Corel, will be our keynote speaker.
Jon “maddog” Hall, Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond are among our
initial list of speakers. We're also planning BOFs (Birds of a
Feather), a fundraiser dinner and a terminal room, which will be a
great place to meet other people in the Linux community. The
exhibits and activities will all be free, and the conference
sessions will be reasonably priced with pre-registration and
student discounts. By the time this interview is printed, we will
have our on-line registration system running.

One of the highlights is our “Linux in Action” booth. This
booth is staffed by ALE members, and it's a great place for people
to use Linux hands-on. We demo a wide variety of hardware and
software running Linux with theme areas such as “servers”,
“windowing systems” and “productivity tools”, showing people
what Linux can do. Attendees are free to use the machines and
software packages and ask questions of ALE staff. Last year we had
Linux running on over 15 Intel, Alpha, SPARC and PPC boxes, using
five Linux distributions and loads of software. It was quite a
popular attraction.

This year our goal is to double the show size. We are running
ads in Linux Journal,
Boardwatch and Sys Admin
as well as launching an electronic ad campaign. We're planning for
1000 to 2000 attendees. We had 500 people attend last year with no
national advertising and only a few months of electronic
advertising, such as postings to c.o.l.a and contacting users'
groups. Our show also follows NetWorld+Interop, one of the largest
networking trade shows in existence. We hope to draw some of the
attendees to our show in the same way that we followed COMDEX last
year.

As for exhibitors, our goal is to fill 40 booths with vendors
showing off Linux and related software, hardware, CDs, books,
shirts and whatever else they wish to bring. Last year we had 25
vendors on the show floor, a record number at that time for a Linux
show.

Margie: Anything in
particular that you plan to do differently?

Greg: Yes, a few things.
We're excited about the amount of time we have to plan this show,
since we basically started planning it right after the 1997 show
ended. With over a year to prepare, we're going to be able to do a
lot more.

One of the biggest things we learned was that Friday/Saturday
shows always do better than Saturday/Sunday shows. We had great
attendance on Saturday last year, but Sunday was noticeably slower.
This year our show starts on Friday and actually overlaps with
NetWorld+Interop that day, which will be a mere three blocks
away.

We also learned many small lessons. We met with each vendor
that exhibited last year to find out if they had any comments or
advice about the show. We learned things through experience, what
worked well for us and what we could have done differently. There
truly is no substitute for experience.

Margie: ALS sounds like it
will be a fun and worthwhile conference for those who attend. Let's
move on—tell us a bit about the Linux Documentation
Project.

Greg: The Linux
Documentation Project (LDP) was started in order to write
documentation for the Linux operating system. According to the
collective memory, it was started sometime in 1992 by Michael K.
Johnson, Matt Welsh and Lars Wirzenius.

The overall goal of the LDP is to write documents that cover
installing, configuring and using Linux. For information about the
LDP, visit the LDP home page at http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/. You
can find all the documentation in the LDP collection, as well as
many useful links and information. The LDP home pages were some of
the first Linux-related pages on the Net when Matt started writing
them in 1994, and they have accumulated a lot of information since
that time.

We have four basic types of documentation: guides, HOWTOs,
man pages and FAQs. Guides are entire books on complex topics; for
example, Linux Installation and Getting
Started and the Linux System Administrators'
Guide. HOWTOs are detailed “how to” documents on
specific subjects, such as networking, SCSI or hardware
compatibility. The man pages as well as many FAQs, including the
Linux FAQ, are also produced. We have a few special documents that
you can find on-line on the home page, such as Linux
Gazette, the Linux Kernel Hackers' Guide and certain
HOWTOs.

Many translation projects and non-English LDPs have been
formed and more are starting. Links to these projects can be found
on the LDP web pages. We also support them by getting some of their
work archived on sunsite. This way the documentation is easily
accessible, and also gets distributed on CD archives.

Margie: What is your part in
the LDP?

Greg: I joined the LDP in
the fall of 1993 when I started the Serial FAQ after many
frustrating hours of trying to get
getty running on my box. This FAQ
later became the Serial HOWTO, which I maintained until a few
months ago. I had to give this up recently due to a lack of
time.

I took over the HOWTO coordination from Matt in 1995, and
managed the HOWTOs until April of this year, when I found a new
victim/volunteer to take over for me. I decided to give this part
of the LDP up too, again due to lack of time and a lack of
enthusiasm.

Now I'm pretty much responsible for the LDP web pages and the
overall LDP coordination as well as acting as a point of contact. I
also maintain the /docs directory on sunsite and whatever else
happens to fall into the documentation area.

Margie: Are there particular
guidelines for submitting documentation to the project?

Greg: The most important
thing to remember is to contact us first, and
to get approval if you are interested in contributing to the LDP.
In order to coordinate the documentation effort, we need to be
aware of all the work different people are doing. This way, efforts
are not duplicated and wasted. I have had to turn away several
submissions because they were duplicated or, in some cases, not
appropriate for the LDP.

We have set a standard of using LaTeX for the LDP Guides
(large book-like references), and using SGML for the HOWTOs (short,
specific “how to” documents). Currently, a package called “SGML
Tools” is used to take the SGML source and produce PostScript,
DVI, HTML and plain text output. All submissions must follow these
standards so that we can provide a common look for the formatted
documents and effectively manage the sources.

Margie: What other Linux
projects are you involved in? Do you do any development?

Greg: No, I don't do any
development. For some reason, I dislike programming so I help out
in other ways. The LDP and ALE/ALS are my primary Linux projects,
but I have also been known to help maintain sunsite's archive, and
I have reviewed a few Linux books here and there.

Margie: What do you think is
the most exciting project happening with Linux today?

Greg: I think the most
exciting thing is that Linux is finally being recognized as a
viable alternative and contending OS. (Of course, we knew it all
along.) It is essential to have an alternative to Microsoft—I'm
not interested in using the square wheel they re-invent every few
years. 1998 has been a great year for Linux; just look at all the
attention it's been getting recently. The trade magazines (both
on-line and printed) have been full of Linux reviews and stories.
For example, InfoWorld awarded the “1997 Best Technical Support
Award” to the Linux community. It's good to see all the hard work
by the developers and commercial companies paying off.

I'm also excited to see a lot of projects that have the goal
of making Linux easier, more productive and more fun to use.
Projects such as GNOME, GIMP and Linuxconf, to name a few, are
providing Linux with some killer applications and tools. The Linux
Standard Base (LSB) being set up by Bruce Perens should also be an
interesting project.

Margie: Any parting
words?

Greg: Just a couple of
e-mail addresses and a URL. I can be reached via e-mail at
gregh@sunsite.unc.edu. I'm always interested in comments about the
LDP web pages or about the LDP in general. The HOWTO coordinator
can be reached via e-mail at linux-howto@sunsite.unc.edu.

If you are interested in the 1998 Atlanta Linux Showcase or
the Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts, visit our web site at
http://www.ale.org/.

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